Free Certification Exams

Want to see if you’re ready to develop for the Azure platform? Do you have what it takes to create Web apps using ASP.NET, JavaScript, AJAX and Silverlight? What about desktop apps using WPF? Perhaps you’re the service developer using WCF or maybe you’re good at data access with ADO.NET.

Ever tested your knowledge on these topics? Want to?

I have just the opportunity for you.

I know some of you are just waiting for the announcement while some of you may find this page through a search engine and have no idea what I’m talking about. Whatever brought you here is not important at the moment. What is important is that I am providing advanced notice of upcoming exams for Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.

Why is this worthy of your time? If you decide you want to take one, or more, of these exams, it’s important to know what you’re up against and what it will cost you.

First things first. Cost. Simple. You don’t have to pay anything to take these exams. Absolutely, 100% free, no charge, take ‘em while you can. There are no catches, no caveats, no tricks. Free is free in this case.

In case you doubt me, let me explain what a beta exam is and why we are offering it for free. During our exam development process, we make the actual exams available, at a Prometric testing center, for no charge. This is a step that helps us increase exam quality by having industry experts evaluate each question, by taking the exam, and providing feedback to Microsoft. We use your feedback to fix, replace, or scrap questions that are technically incorrect, not relevant, etc. You help us create a better product for your fellow developers that will have to pay for the exam.

Some common questions and answers are provided here;

1) How much does it cost to take a beta exam? – Absolutely nothing but your time. There is no charge. Nothing from Microsoft or Prometric.

2) Is this a real exam? – Yes it is. Even though the questions are not scored at the time you take the exam, they are real questions and the exam is real. If you pass the exam, you earn the certification just the same as if you took it in a non-beta environment. This means you don’t get a pass/fail or score immediately following the exam, but you do get notified 8 to 10 weeks later because we move slow in getting the final scoring in place.

4) What is the main difference between a beta and non-beta exam, besides cost? – The beta exam will show you questions that have not been through a final QA check. You are that final QA check. Non-beta exams expose you to 40 or 45 questions and you have a total of two hours to complete it. The beta exam could expose you to as many as 125 to 150 questions and take up to four hours. (bathroom breaks permitted).

5) Who is eligible? – The prep guides will go into more detail about the target audience for the exams, and the links to those will be forthcoming, but, If you use .NET 2.0, 3.5, or 4, and Visual Studio to create software applications using the technologies included in the .NET framework, you are eligible.

6) Why is this beta different from others? – In the past, we have focused our beta invitations on a small set of subject matter experts. We want to expand the beta offerings even more to industry experts who haven’t taken an exam yet, are considering it but don’t want to invest the money until hey know what the exam is all about, and to get a larger set of experts providing the feedback to help drive quality.

7) In the past, I have tried to register but the exam slots were all full. How will this be any different? – We set a maximum limit on the number of beta exams that can be delivered. This is necessary for various reasons, some obvious and some not, but I won’t be going into those here. To alleviate the issue of the exams filling up, we are increasing this maximum limit to address two problems, not enough open seats and no-shows. That’s right, people actually register for an exam and then don’t show up to take it. Even it is free. No-shows result in exam seats being unavailable to someone who wanted to take it but could not.

8) When will these be available? – All but one exam will be available between the dates of March 31, 2010 to April 20, 2010. Mark your calendars now! We will also be opening registration earlier for these as well.

70-518 Pro: Designing and Developing Windows® Applications using Microsoft .NET Framework 4 will not be available in this time frame but should be available in the April time frame.

10) How do you sign up? – In a little while, I will be making a post to this blog again with the link to the prep guide, Prometric’s web site for registration and the all important beta exam codes that change that cost in your shopping cart to $0.

As always, if you have comments, questions, or suggestions, please start the dialog here.

Are there going to be similar Beta Exams for the upgrades of the 3.5 to 4.0 certifications? Currently I have the Windows, ASP.NET and Enterprise MCPD’s. I am wondering if I should try these Beta Exams or hold off for the Upgrade versions?

The is no Enterprise certification or exam in the VS 2010 certification track. We will be doing some market research to better understand what an "Enterprise Developer" is in relation to current and new technologies. SaaS, Cloud Computing, and Azure are some big contributors to what we are reviewing as a part of this effort.

We just didn’t feel that an MCPD Enterprise was the correct thing to do this time around without supporting research to ensure we are targeting the correct audience and that it provides those with the credential, a proper certification that maps to the job role and what industry expects.

We do not hold beta deliveries for the upgrade exams. The reason is that the upgrade exams are composite and contain material from the requisite MCTS and MCPD exams.

Once those exams go through their beta phases and the final items are selected, the upgrade exams are created and the content from each exam is included as necessary to create the upgrade exams. As a result, the material has already been through a beta process and doesn’t require another pass.

So would you prefer that only experts on the subject matters register for the beta exams? I am only mid-level on general ASP.NET 2/3.5 development, a little winforms and haven’t really used WCF. Should I still register for these exams?

What I prefer and what people do sometimes are at complete opposites to each other. 🙂

If you take a look at any of our existing prep guides, they indicate in the target audience portion, the type of experience we "recommend" that you have prior to taking an exam.

Having said that, people look at "free" and think, "what have I got to lose?.

Realistically, if you have some experience, by all means take the exam. If you have no experience, like you metnion about WCF, it likely isn’t worth your time or effort to sit an exam and find out what you already know, that you don’t know the topic.

Sounds like you are a great candidate for the Web developer exam. The Windows exam covers more WPF than Windows Forms this time around though so you may want to think that one through first.

These exams are not designed to prove you are an expert. They are designed to show that have a base level of knowledge and skills.

When the prep guides for these exams are published, they will list the Microsoft training resources that are, or will be, available.

Most third-party training vendors don’t get started on prep materials until they have seen the prep-guides to ensure they are matching the exam objectives. I cannot tell you who will create training material for these exams as we don’t control third-party vendors and what they develop.

If you have followed any of my previous posts, you will know that I am of the opinion that to prepare for these exams, it is best to use the prep guide to identify the areas you need to be proficient on, use the product and MSDN to learn and practice those skills that you are weak on.

If you are just starting out in C/C++ or Java, I wouldn’t recommend that you consider taking these beta exams. The material covered in these exams is on developing applications using various .NET technologies such as ASP.NET, ADO.NET, WPF and WCF. If you are not familiar with these technologies and have some experience developing with them, you are not a good candidate for these exams.

Yes, you will still have the MCTS certification. You will continue to be certified until we retire the exam and certification. This won’t happen until Microsoft ends mainstream support for that Visual Studio version.

Keep in mind that your peers decided "what" whould be on the exam and then another larger group of your peers decided "how much" coverage each component should get.

An important consideration here is not how cool, new, or useful a technology is but rather what is important from a skills and knowledge perspective at this time in the industry.

Microsoft does not dictate to the subject matter experts that design these exams, what they must include or not. We do indicate that new technologies should be covered when they are included in a product release or part of a technology but that is it.

There will never be 100% satisfaction between all developers when it comes to what is on an exam but we expect the subject matter experts that help use design and create these exams to tell us what is most important from a day-to-day perspective with the covered technologies.

As MVC grows and gains in usage, you will likely see more coverage on the exam in future versions but for now, the industry has spoken and this is where this exam sits in terms of MVC.

I don’t say this to remove blame or responsibility from Microsoft for what is covered on the exam, merely to help you and others not familiar with the process to better understand how these percentages are arrived at.

Fair enough Gerry regarding MVC coverage. But it just goes to show how quickly the exams are out of date because of how long the cycles are on them. The exam objectives for 70-515 won’t get updated for 3 or so years and I could easily see where asp.net web forms are obsolete because a better technology has replaced it (just like web forms did to classic asp).

This has led me to post a question regarding a scenario today where someone would choose asp.net web forms for a new project over asp.net mvc because I can’t come up with a valid one.

And now you see why it’s so difficult for use to create a certification on Silverlight. 🙂

While I agree with your sentiment about the technology coverage being out of date I will also point out another consideration.

While ASP.NET in relation to MVC is like comparing ASP to ASP.NET, remember that not all developers worldwide use the latest and greatest. There are still organizations developing and maintaining code on VB 6. Our Visual Studio 2005 certification exams are still being delivered.

Essentially what I’m saying is that in 3 years, these exams will be the old technology and a new set of exams and certifications will take their place, and will cover the newer technologies.

It’s a constant game of catchup and while there are those in the industry, such as yourself, that are early adopters and use newer technologies, there are still those who provide feedback that they want is to slow down and stop creating new exams for every version of the Framework and Visual Studio.

There will always be a need to balance the possible with desirable. That balance is never an easy one to obtain.

Let me know some of the responses you get on your question and we can post them here.

As far as I know, it is not deprecated. It was only introduced in .NET 3.5 and is still available in .NET 4.

At any rate, the subject matter experts agreed it is still important and deserves coverage on the exam.

As for special mention when passing a beta exam, no. You are given the opportunity to take the exam for free but there is no special recognition. If you pass, you simply receive the same credential as if you passed the live version.

I took the patience and read through the link you posted me once more (as I did before I posted my comment). And even if it does announce that the details for registering for the exams, will be posted in a little bit, it doesn’t actually say how to register.

My goal however would be to obtain the 70-519: Pro: Designing and Developing Web Applications Using Microsoft .NET Framework 4

As I am focussing more on web.

If I want to upgrade to this – I am gathering that it would make more sense for me to take the MCPD ASP.NET Developer 3.5 PRO exam now to get that (instead of Enterprise MCPD) and then wait for the 4.0 MCPD Web App Developer upgrade? I would have done 1 more exam than necessary in that case (ADO.NET) but that’s ok.

There is no Enterprise Pro and no replacement at this time. For various reasons we didn’t create one this time around.

We’re looking at how Azure, SoA, SSaS, other Cloud Computing technologies and ALM all play into the certification landscape so you may see something coming around those technologies.

For now, the Web and Windows Pro certs require passing ADO.NET and WCF exams along with the requisite Web or Windows TS exam so each is similar to Enterprise without having both client technologies included in one exam.

One other point to keep in mind, even though it can be considered a short cut. The upgrade exams are more about ensuring the candidate understands the deltas in the new version. This is the reason why we require;

1) MCPD in the immediate previous version to ensure they are certified on the core features of .NET.

2) We don’t allow a version skip in the upgrade, ie from 2.0 to 4.0 directly.

It is also an incentive for those already certified to help reduce the pain and cost of moving to the latest versions. 🙂

I looked again at he upgrades, and the MCPD Windows 3.5 to 4.0 still seems a bit odd, to me :-). Looking at the objectives MCTS Windows 4.0 is a WCF exam, which I think is a good idea, but it means that we are upgrading MCPD’s that have no commomality. It does save me bucks and time, so I get the reward part, but it does not feel like an upgrade.

If you are certified as an MCPD ASP.NET Developer 3.5 or Enterprise, you can take exam 70-523 to upgrade to Web Developer on .NET 4.

When you take the upgrade exam, you will be presented with content from the following exams;

70-515, 70-513, 70-516, and 70-519.

That means prior to taking the test, you better know WCF, ADO.NET, and ASP.NET. 515, 513, and 516 are required MCTS exams, along with 519, for acheiving the MCPD Web Developer 4. The upgrade allows you to take them all in one exam.

The beta exams are not yet available through Prometric South Africa. When I phoned up the call centre, they did not seem to be aware of the beta exams and could not give a view as to when they would become available (The call centre that serves South Africa is based in the Netherlands).

2) There is a South Africa Prometric office, but the calls are routed to the Prometric call centre in Europe which services the Africa region (their number is 0800 980 562 when dialed from SA). The consultant I spoke to was not aware of the beta exams either.

Thanks, the exams are listed on Prometric as 71-xxx and not 70-xxx (e.g. 71-513) hence why I missed it. Gerry, are the exams in beta phase free? Prometric is charging for these exams at 690 SA Rands each (approx. $100)?

Yesterday I have attended 071-519 exam. I wanted to notify some of my thoughts but was not able as I took almost 3 hours to finish the exam and did not have patience to sit more time write. Is there any way I can do this now?

The whole purpose of the 4 hour seat time is for you to take the time to provide that feedback during the exam, while the information is fresh in your mind. It is part of what you agree to when you accept the information at the beginning of the exam.

You can send me the information directly but if I cannot map it to specific questions or areas on the exam, it might no be useful at this point.